Demographics and early
history

Islam, the predominant
religion of all of Central Asia, was brought to the region by
the Arabs in
the seventh century. Since that time, Islam has become an integral
part of Tajik culture.
For instance, the Samanid state became a staunch patron of
Islamic architecture and spread the Islamo-Persian culture deep
into the heart of Central Asia. Also, Ismail Samani, who is considered the
father of the Tajik nation, promoted Muslim missionary efforts
around the region. The population within Central Asia began firmly
accepting Islam in significant numbers, notably in Taraz, now in modern day Kazakhstan. During the Soviet era, efforts
to secularize society were largely unsuccessful and the post-Soviet
era has seen a marked increase in religious practice. The number of
Muslims who fast during the holy month of Ramadan is high; up to 99 % of Muslims in
the countryside and 70 % in the cities fasted during the
latest month of Ramadan (2004). Approximately 15 % of all
Muslims are Shi'a, 40 % of whom are Ismailis.
Most of them reside in the remote Gorno-Badakhshan
region as well as certain districts of the southern Khatlon region and in Dushanbe. Most other Muslim
inhabitants (approximately 85 %) are Sunni. Among other
religions, the Russian Orthodox faith is practiced only by
the Russians living therein although the Russian community shrank
significantly in the early 1990s. Some other small Christian groups
now enjoy relative freedom of worship. There also is a small Jewish community.

The Sunni branch of Islam has a 1,200-year-old tradition among
the sedentary population of Central Asia, including the Tajiks. A minority group, the Pamiris, are
members of a much smaller denomination of Shia Islam, Ismailism, which first won
adherents in Central Asia in the early tenth century. Despite
persecution, Ismailism has survived in the remote Pamir
Mountains.

Soviet
era

During the course of seven decades of political control, Soviet
policy makers were unable to eradicate the Islamic tradition. The
harshest of the Soviet anti-Islamic campaigns occurred from the
late 1920s to the late 1930s as part of a unionwide drive against
religion in general. In this period, many Muslim functionaries were
killed, and religious instruction and observance were curtailed
sharply. After the German
attack of the Soviet
Union in 1941, official policy toward Islam moderated. One of
the changes that ensued was the establishment in 1943 of an
officially sanctioned Islamic hierarchy for Central Asia, the Muslim
Board of Central Asia. Together with three similar
organizations for other regions of the Soviet Union having large
Muslim populations, this administration was controlled by the Kremlin, which
required loyalty from religious officials. Although its
administrative personnel and structure were inadequate to serve the
needs of the Muslim population of the region, the administration
made possible the legal existence of some Islamic institutions, as
well as the activities of religious functionaries, a small number
of mosques, and religious instruction at two seminaries in Uzbekistan.

In the early 1960s, the Khrushchev regime escalated anti-Islamic
propaganda. Then, on several occasions in the 1970s and 1980s, the
Kremlin leadership called for renewed efforts to combat religion,
including Islam. Typically, such campaigns included conversion of
mosques to secular use; attempts to reidentify traditional
Islamic-linked customs with nationalism rather than religion; and
propaganda linking Islam to backwardness, superstition, and
bigotry. Official hostility toward Islam grew in 1979 with Soviet
military involvement in nearby Afghanistan and the increasing
assertiveness of Islamic revivalists in several countries. From
that time through the early post-Soviet era, some officials in Moscow and in Tajikistan warned
of an extremist Islamic menace, often on the basis of limited or
distorted evidence. Despite all these efforts, Islam remained an
important part of the identity of the Tajiks and other Muslim
peoples of Tajikistan through the end of the Soviet era and the
first years of independence.

Since
independence

Identification with Islam as an integral part of life is shared
by urban and rural, old and young, and educated and uneducated
Tajiks. The role that the faith plays in the lives of individuals
varies considerably, however. For some Tajiks, Islam is more
important as an intrinsic part of their cultural heritage than as a
religion in the usual sense, and a few Tajiks are not
religious.

In any case, Tajiks have disproved the standard Soviet
assertion that the urbanized industrial labor force and the
educated population had little to do with a "remnant of a bygone
era" such as Islam. A noteworthy development in the late Soviet and
early independence eras was increased interest, especially among
young people, in the substance of Islamic doctrine. In the
post-Soviet era, Islam became an important element in the
nationalist arguments of certain Tajik intellectuals.

Islam continued in Tajikistan in widely varied forms because of
the strength of an indigenous folk Islam quite apart from the
Soviet-sanctioned Islamic administration. Long before the Soviet
era, rural Central Asians, including inhabitants of
what became Tajikistan, had access to their own holy places. There
were also small, local religious schools and individuals within
their communities who were venerated for religious knowledge and
piety. These elements sustained religion in the countryside,
independent of outside events. Under Soviet regimes, Tajiks used
the substantial remainder of this rural, popular Islam to continue
at least some aspects of the teaching and practice of their faith
after the activities of urban-based Islamic institutions were
curtailed. Folk Islam also played an important role in the survival
of Islam among the urban population. One form of this popular Islam
is Sufism--often described as
Islamic mysticism and practiced by individuals in a variety of
ways. The most important form of Sufism in Tajikistan is the Naqshbandiyya, a Sufi order with followers
as far away as India and Malaysia. Besides Sufism,
other forms of popular Islam are associated with local cults and
holy places or with individuals whose knowledge or personal
qualities have made them influential.

By late 1989, the Gorbachev regime's increased tolerance of
religion began to affect the practices of Islam and Russian
Orthodoxy. Religious instruction increased. New mosques opened.
Religious observance became more open, and participation increased.
New Islamic spokesmen emerged in Tajikistan and elsewhere in
Central Asia. The authority of the official, Tashkent-based Muslim Board of Central Asia
crumbled in Tajikistan. Tajikistan acquired its own seminary in Dushanbe, ending its reliance
on the administration's two seminaries in Uzbekistan.

By 1990 the Muslim Board's chief official in Dushanbe, the senior qadi , Hajji Akbar
Turajonzoda (in office 1988-92), had become an independent
public figure with a broad following. In the factional political
battle that followed independence, Turajonzoda criticized the
communist hard-liners and supported political reform and official
recognition of the importance of Islam in Tajikistani society. At
the same time, he repeatedly denied hard-liners' accusations that
he sought the establishment of an Islamic government in Tajikistan.
After the hard-liners' victory in the civil war at the end of 1992,
Turajonzoda fled Dushanbe and was charged with treason. Ironically,
however, after 1997 powershare between current administration and
the former opposition groups, Turajonzoda has been appointed as a
Deputy Prime Minister of Tajikistan, and unequivocally supports Rahmon's
regime.

Muslims in Tajikistan also organized politically in the early
1990s. In 1990, as citizens in many parts of the Soviet Union were
forming their own civic organizations, Muslims from various parts
of the union organized the Islamic Rebirth Party. By the early
1990s, the growth of mass political involvement among Central
Asian Muslims led all political parties--including the
Communist Party of Tajikistan--to take into account the Muslim
heritage of the vast majority of Tajikistan's inhabitants.

Islam also played a key political role for the regime in power
in the early 1990s. The communist old guard evoked domestic and
international fears that fundamentalist Muslims would destabilize
the Tajikistani government when that message was expedient in
fortifying the hard-liners' position against opposition forces in
the civil war. However, the Nabiyev regime also was willing to
represent itself as an ally of Iran's Islamic republic while depicting the Tajik
opposition as unfaithful Muslims.

Recent
developments

In October 2005 The Tajik Education Ministry banned female
students from wearing Islamic headscarves in secular schools.
Wearing the hijab, or head scarf traditionally worn by Muslim
women, and other religious symbols "is unacceptable in secular
schools and violates the constitution and a new law on education,"
Education Minister Abdudjabor Rakhmonov said. He expressed concern
that pupils spent too much time in mosques at the expense of their
education. "Many spend evenings in mosques and do not do their
homework," Rakhmonov said, adding that during the Islamic holy
month of Ramadan many did not attend classes after Friday
prayers.

More recently, the Tajik government have closed hundreds of
unregistered Mosques drawing locals to believe that the
crackdown is actually against the religion of Islam.[2]
According to reports, some Mosques have been destroyed while others
have been converted into beauty parlors.[2]
Some have speculated that the crackdown is a result of governmental
concerns of Mosques being "unsafe," or that the Imams may not act
"responsible."[2]